The exhibitions, fairs and openings to keep track of before the year closes.

The autumn art calendar has a fairly dependable geography. New York begins in September, London reaches full volume around Frieze, Paris takes over the following week, and Miami provides the slightly overheated conclusion in December.

There is considerably more happening than anyone reasonably needs to see. These are the dates to file.

New York

Arthur Jafa: I Am Tony New Museum

New Museum 24 September 2026 – 31 January 2027

The New Museum reopens on the Bowery on 24 September with its most extensive Arthur Jafa survey to date. Jafa's films, photographs and installations have spent decades examining Black culture, image-making, music and the strange power accumulated by pictures once they start circulating.

Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art 4 October 2026 – 31 January 2027

More than 120 works place Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock alongside one another rather than allowing one career to remain permanently in the other's shadow. Neither artist has had a show at the Met before this one, and it's the first time in over two decades that New York has seen their work presented together at this scale.

Brancusi: The Artist and His Studio MoMA

MoMA 25 October 2026 – 27 February 2027

Brancusi treated his studio as part of the work itself. MoMA devotes its sixth floor to sculpture, furniture, photographs, film, tools and archival material, with substantial loans from the Centre Pompidou's Atelier Brancusi.

Also filed: Brice Marden at Gagosian from 15 September; Hiroshi Sugimoto at Lisson from 15 September; Yoshitomo Nara at David Zwirner from 29 October.

London

Ana Mendieta Tate Modern

Tate Modern Until 17 January 2027

Mendieta remains one of the season's essential London exhibitions, particularly because the work is better understood in accumulation than through the handful of images that have become familiar online. Body, landscape, disappearance, earth and violence recur without becoming quite as easily categorised as the term Silueta Series can sometimes suggest.

Gabriel Orozco: Chronotopic White Cube

White Cube Bermondsey 16 September – 8 November 2026

More than 100 works, old and new, across painting, sculpture, photography, assemblage and paper. The exhibition also marks 30 years since Orozco's ICA exhibition in London and ten years since the completion of his permanent garden at South London Gallery.

Frieze London + Frieze Masters Frieze

Regent's Park 14–18 October 2026

Almost 300 galleries from 48 countries and regions are spread between the two fairs this year. Frieze remains contemporary; Masters continues to be the more useful corrective when several hours of newness begin to blur together. The invitation-only preview is 14 October, with public admission beginning on the 15th.

The fair is only part of the week. Frieze Sculpture runs in Regent's Park from 16 September to 1 November, while London's galleries arrange their strongest autumn shows around the same dates.

National Gallery 21 November 2026 – 11 April 2027

The National Gallery is bringing together all nine known painted portraits by Jan van Eyck, alongside his only surviving portrait drawing. The Arnolfini Portrait is joined by the Berlin portrait thought to depict the same Giovanni Arnolfini; the exhibition also reunites works that have rarely, if ever, occupied the same room. This is the London exhibition to leave room for after the October machinery has moved on.

Also filed: Anselm Kiefer at White Cube Bermondsey from 25 November; Louise Giovanelli at White Cube Mason's Yard from 20 November.

Paris

Paris now has the advantage of arriving immediately after London. The week has become sufficiently dense that Art Basel itself is no longer the whole point.

Paris Internationale Paris Internationale

20–24 October 2026 Preview: 19 October

The smaller fair remains the place to look before the bigger fairs get going. Its usefulness is largely a matter of scale: younger galleries, less obvious names and a better chance of seeing something before consensus has formed around it.

Art Basel Paris Art Basel

Grand Palais 23–25 October 2026 Preview days: 21–22 October

The fifth Paris edition brings 211 exhibitors from 41 countries and territories to the Grand Palais. More important than the number is how quickly the fair has embedded itself into the city: by now the surrounding gallery dinners, museum exhibitions, private collections and temporary projects are as consequential to the week as the aisles inside the Grand Palais.

Tracey Emin White Cube Paris

White Cube Paris 20 October – 18 December 2026

Emin opens on avenue Matignon as Paris week begins, placing one of Britain's most recognisable living artists inside an already crowded programme.

Anselm Kiefer: Nymphäum Thaddaeus Ropac

Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin Until 25 October 2026

Worth remembering precisely because it sits outside the central Paris fair circuit. Kiefer's Pantin exhibition closes on the final day of Art Basel Paris, making the timing unusually neat for anyone already in the city.

The auctions

October also marks the return of the major European evening sales. Sotheby's holds its Contemporary Evening Auction in London on 15 October, followed by a Contemporary Day Auction on 16 October. Paris follows with Sotheby's Surrealism and Its Legacy and Modernités on 23 October. Christie's Exceptional Sale takes place in Paris on 4 November, before attention moves to New York for the November 20th- and 21st-century sales.

The auction houses are worth watching even without an intention to bid. Provenance, estimates and what actually sells provide a less polished reading of the market than the fairs do.

Miami

Art Basel Miami Beach Art Basel

4–6 December 2026 Private days: 2–3 December

By December the same galleries, collectors, advisers and a growing number of fashion brands have migrated south. Art Basel opens privately on 2 December and publicly on the 4th, running through 6 December at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Pérez Art Museum Miami's Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols remains open through June 2027, giving the week at least one good reason to leave the fairs altogether.

Dates to file

24 September — Arthur Jafa opens at the New Museum
4 October — Krasner and Pollock opens at the Met
14–18 October — Frieze London and Frieze Masters
19 October — Paris Internationale preview
20 October — Tracey Emin opens in Paris
21–22 October — Art Basel Paris previews
23–25 October — Art Basel Paris
25 October — Brancusi opens at MoMA
21 November — Van Eyck opens at the National Gallery
2 December — Art Basel Miami Beach private days begin
4–6 December — Art Basel Miami Beach

There will be hundreds of openings between now and Christmas. The calendar that matters is much shorter.